Trying desperately, pathetically, to curry the favour of its nauseatingly evil political bosses (that would be the slimy stephen harper and the Criminal Party of Canada), Canada's national broadcaster, the CBC continues to side with the monsters of the richest 1% and their servants.
As Quebec students march in protest against unnecessary tuition hikes, a draconian "emergency" law ("Gasp! The students aren't accepting their fate! Gasp1 The students aren't accepting our insulting offer! Gasp! The students aren't meekly acquiescing in the arbitrary curtailment of their political rights! It's an EMERGENCY!!!") and suffer mass arrests, this is how the CBC presents it: "Police kettle Montreal student protest, arresting 400"
The Quebec government has offered to return to the bargaining table, but it won't give in on the tuition hike or on another student demand that it scrap its controversial new emergency law that clamps down on protests.
Protesters snaked through the streets for more than three hours before police kettled them.
Kettling is a police tactic widely used in Europe where riot police surround demonstrators and limit or cut off their exits. It has been widely criticized because it often results in the scooping up of innocent bystanders as well as rowdies.
A recent report by Ontario's police watchdog blasted Toronto police for their use of kettling during the G20 summit two years ago, saying they violated civil rights, detained people illegally and used excessive force.
Const. Daniel Lacoursiere of the Montreal police said officers were in danger and had to act.
"Their physical integrity was in jeopardy," he told CBC News. "That's why all these arrests were made at the corner of St-Denis and Sherbrooke."
Riot squad officers had been marching on the sidewalk beside the front of the protest all evening. An order to disperse was given when protesters arrived at Sherbrooke Street, because police had been pelted by projectiles and other criminal acts had been committed, Lacoursiere said.
The group had also apparently resisted going in a direction ordered by police.
Those arrested could face charges under municipal bylaws or the Criminal Code.
...
The swift police action squeezed the mob together tighter and tighter as the officers advanced and some people begged to be let out, pleading they were bystanders. One photographer was seen to be pushed to the ground and a piece of equipment was heard breaking. Some protesters cursed and yelled at provincial police officers, who ignored the taunts. (emphases added)
Fucking amazing 'eh? "The Quebec government is prepared to return to the bargaining table" but not to negotiate? That's not "returning to the bargaining table" then!
Observe all the quotes and accounts from the cops' point of view and the complete absence of the protesters' view!
And it's nice how they call the protesters a "mob" with all that that implies, as if it was justified by something, as if it wasn't blatant editorializing!
2 comments:
The most disturbing part is that the media (including the CBC) focus more on the protest than the issue at hand. We quickly lose site of the right to assemble and protest and focus on the poor police or the poor government who somehow would have to be accountable. MP's or MLA's whatever, don't typically represent the electorate, they represent whoever spends the most money to get them elected. The media have got things pretty much backwards.
BC waterboy,
It's like every other protest: If there isn't any violence, there's hardly any coverage. We get full-page stories with colour photographs about the empty rhetoric or [sometimes obvious] bullshit of the elites, but never the same sort of respectful coverage of the critics.
(I'll admit that sometimes the protesters' views are covered, as when they tried to give respectability to Tea-Baggers or form some sort of equivalence between tiny bursts of right-wing petulance and the sustained criticism of the Left.)
In Quebec's students' protest, if the CBC can quote the police and not even provide the counter-view, and then call the students a "mob" why can't they refer to Charest's offer to raise tuitions even more, but introduce it more incrementally the obvious insult that it was? Or his offer to return to the bargaining table, but to refuse to negotiate on any of the issues, the obvious lie that it is?
Because our newsmedia are corrupted by the weakness of our democracy.
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